


Development Economics

by harrycrewe



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Death References, Grown Men Crying, M/M, Reincarnation, author does not know anything about Sweden, author does not know anything about economics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-15
Updated: 2012-04-15
Packaged: 2017-11-03 16:34:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/383580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/harrycrewe/pseuds/harrycrewe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur's an economics professor, depressed about the end of his marriage, who has just won the Nobel Prize. In Stockholm he meets Merlin, the prize winner in Medicine.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Development Economics

Arthur’s in his office when he gets the message, and his first thought is, I have to tell Gwen, followed an instant later by remembering that she isn’t his to tell anymore. It doesn’t matter, he thinks, I’ll call anyway, and I’ll tell her – I’ll tell her that she was the first one I thought of. 

But when he dials the number, it’s Lance’s voice on the other end saying, “Hello? Hello?” and Arthur loses his nerve and hangs up, even though he knows they’ll know it was him.

Fuck it, he thinks, this is it. He’s not going to spend the greatest day of his professional life by being depressed about the end of his marriage.

So he heads across the hall to Leon’s office and raps his knuckle on the open door.

“Feel like getting drinks after work?” He asks.

Leon looks up from where he’s nearly buried under a pile of badly-written undergraduate essays. “Student happy hour?” he suggests doubtfully.

“I had something a little more celebratory in mind,” Arthur says, nearly bouncing on the balls of his feet. He can feel the adrenaline starting to hit his system, like his body’s doesn’t quite know what’s happened yet but is about to start running to catch up with the news. He has the sudden desire to sprint back to his office to check if the message was real. Of course it was. You don’t just make something like that up, do you? It couldn’t have been a divorce-induced hallucination?

“What’s happened, Arthur?” Leon says, having gotten around to really paying attention to him. “You seem pretty-”

“I just got a call,” Arthur says. “Some news. Let’s get the whole department. Let’s get Agravaine, even. I want the Hayekians to be there. I want to see the look on his face-“

“What are you talking about?” Says Leon again, and Arthur blurts out, 

“Stockholm, Leon! Fucking Stockholm just called me!” 

 

The next few days follow in a wash of parties, both spontaneous, (Leon pulls a bottle of Woodford Reserve out from his bottom desk drawer right after Arthur gives him the news, his graduate students surprise him with champagne and tears in their eyes, orgasming nearly as hard as he is as they watch their job prospects sky-rocket) and formal, such as the stuffy but nevertheless satisfying cocktails at the reception the University President provides in his honor. Two State Representatives and one Senator come to shake his hand, and the words “youngest winner in the history of the prize” and “fourth Nobel prize winner from our school, but the first for us in Economics” are repeated ad nauseum. Arthur smiles until his mouth hurts; he also calls Gwen and Lance back, to give them the news himself; as luckily on this occasion the excellent manners his mother taught him and his natural inclinations gracefully coincide.

 

It’s surprising how short the time from when he finds out to when the prize is given actually is. Six weeks later he’s on a plane to Stockholm, first class, watching the North Atlantic spread out beneath him, so that Arthur really is on top of the world.

 

He doesn’t have much time after he gets off the plane before a private reception, to be held for the Prize winners. So Arthur dashes up to his room and freshens up and changes into a suit, thankfully not too damaged by the travel, and heads down to the grand ballroom of the hotel, where the event is being held. 

The room is a massive space of marble columns and plush carpeting that makes his pulse race when the doors are opened for him. As he walks in, a waiter is waiting to push a flute of champagne into his left hand, and a man is waiting to shake the right.

“Mr. Pendragon?” He says, “I am Doctor Schroeder, one of the members of the prize committee. It’s wonderful to see you, congratulations.”

“Thank you,” Arthur says.

“How was your flight? Smooth?”

“Fine.” 

“Allow me to introduce you to my colleague, Mr. Svensen.”

Mr. Svensen in turn introduces him to the joint winners of the prize in Chemistry, two older men, one German and one French, who seem to have been rivals in earlier days but now banter back and forth as playfully as old friends. Each is accompanied by a wife, children, and grandchildren. The boys are wearing little suits and the girls are in frilly dresses and they all seem to be twitching with the desire to get under the tables and play, or chase each other. Arthur swallows his champagne and is passed along to the physicist, a gray-haired woman with sharp eyes, who says something upon meeting him about economics not being a ‘real science’ which would normally have Arthur gritting his teeth, if he hadn’t caught the twinkle in her eye.

“My husband’s an economist.” She explains. “I like to give him a hard time.”

“I’m an economic historian, actually,” says the man who comes to join her. He’s as thin and spry as she is. “One of my colleagues wrote a book about your theories this year, as a matter of fact.”

“That’s – alarming,” Arthur replies. The work for which he had received the prize had only been completed fifteen years ago. “So it’s already history, is it?”

“Wait until you’re my age,” says the physicist, and her husband laughs, looking on at her proudly.  


Even the eccentric Trinidadian novelist, who say three comically Anglo-centric and four misogynistic things every time he opens his mouth (it appears that W.S. Vripatil doesn’t so much have conversations as orate, bombastically, whilst looking about for the press) has managed to tow along a beaming wife and several children and grandchildren. Arthur drinks more champagne, and tries not to notice the knot in his stomach as the wife of the novelist, in a beautiful sari, beams with a smile she can’t contain. Every time she is asked a question her hands flutter like birds in her excitement, always coming back to rest on her husband’s arm. Arthur can’t help looking at all of them and thinking, Gwen should have been here. 

He catches sight of slim, tall man in a slightly rumpled suit standing along the wall, looking as out-of-place as Arthur feels. Arthur watches as he tries, but misses, snagging a flute from a waiter. He wonders what he’s doing here: whether he’s a member of the press or one or someone who works for the prize committee.

The man catches Arthur watching him and smiles, and then comes towards him. He’s good looking, in the way Arthur always notices and then tries to forget: a bit younger than Arthur, blue-eyed, dark salt-and-pepper hair still enviably thick.

“This is something, isn’t it?” He says to Arthur, nodding towards the room.

“Yes, it is,” Arthur nods.

“You’re – Arthur Pendragon, right? Congratulations.” 

“Ah. Thanks. You are?”

“Merlin Emrys.”

“Oh!” Arthur says. “Of course. Excuse me. I read the news about you and your mentor.” 

Merlin Emrys is this year’s co-winner of the prize in medicine. He’s ridiculously young to have won, but the rumor is that the Prize Committee was moved by the news that his co-winner and former mentor had been diagnosed with a fatal case of the same disease they’d done their seminal research trying to prevent. Dr. Gaius Walker passed away only days after the prize was announced, so Emrys will accept the second half of the award for his mentor posthumously. “I’m sorry.” 

“Thank you,” Emrys says. “Everyone keeps telling me congratulations, but to be honest, it feels odd. Gaius only passed away a month ago.

“You, uh, didn’t bring your family with you?” Arthur asks.

“Well, no. There’s only my mother, and she’s nearly ninety. Traveling is a bit too much for her these days.” Emrys glances at him. “You didn’t bring anyone, either?”

“It appears we’re the only bachelors here.” Arthur takes another draught of champagne. “My wife - I would have liked her to be here with me. But our divorce was finalized in September. It was amicable, I suppose, but…” He stops himself abruptly, horrified at how much has just spilled out of him.

But to his surprise, Emrys merely nods. “I understand,” He says. “It’s strange to be alone at a time like this, isn’t it?”

A lump grows in Arthur’s throat. He can’t stop himself from adding, “I wanted her to come. I should have asked her to come.” 

They look out over the room together for a moment. Arthur plays with his now-empty flute gloomily and catches the eye of a waiter, who hastens towards him with another. He replaces his glass and Emrys’. 

“It is strange,” Arthur echoes himself. “I ought to be happy, but I’m not. I ought to feel like I’ve accomplished something, and I do, but,” he gestures towards the room at large. Emrys looks a little alarmed and Arthur realizes that perhaps that last glass of champagne, chased by little sleep on the flight the previous night, is starting to catch up to him.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and is horrified to hear his voice sounding maudlin in his own ears.

“That’s alright.” Emrys, thankfully, doesn’t say anything more.

“Maybe I’ll go back to my room now.”

“Perhaps I will as well.” He leans towards Arthur confidingly. “These big events aren’t really my thing either.” 

 

They make their way outside the ballroom, only stopping a few times to shake hands with people neither of them, Arthur supposes, really knows, and then they get into the elevator.

“Eighth floor?” Emrys asks, and Arthur says, “No, tenth.”

When he gets back to his room he sits on the bed covered in luxurious white down comforters, and looks out of huge windows onto a cold city night. Why, at this stage of his life, has he been left crying into his cups, telling the story of his divorce to people he’s only just met? He’s fifty-four already. He thought he would have his life figured out by now. 

Then he reminds himself that he is drunk, that these bad moments will pass by morning, and that tomorrow he will give what is perhaps the most important talk of his life.

The Nobel Prize. Surely that’s proof that he isn’t a failure – that he’s left his mark on the world, made it better somehow, meant something. And when he gets back, it’s going to give him a forum, a means by which to expand his work out from academia into policy, a space where he will be able to do lasting and meaningful good. 

No one needs to know that he would trade it all back again for Gwen, even for just one night with her curled up drowsily by his side, watching a movie while he worked late. If he could make that trade he would never spend that evening, but just keep the promise of it close to him, folded up like a letter against his chest. He would never open it, even when he was about to die, or maybe he would open it only in the very last moments. 

Gwen kissing his cheek. Gwen yelling at him and then crying and crying and coming to cup his face between her hands, Gwen saying Arthur, this isn’t right, it isn’t fair to either one of us, just before she left him. He thought she never would, he had thought, good old Gwen, lovable Gwen, loyal Gwen.  


He climbs under the bedclothes. The alcohol does its work and he falls quickly to sleep.

That night he dreams of red banners snapping in the wind, of the sounds of metal hitting metal, and metal rending flesh. He dreams of his sister, Morgana, but now she is dressed in a strange black dress, and her eyes burn gold, and her face is full of hatred as she raises her hand towards him and he wakes with a start, breathing hard and sweating heavily. The thick comforter that felt so good when he was passing out earlier now feels heavy and suffocating and he pushes it frantically away. He thinks he won’t be able to fall back asleep again, but he does, and this time it’s to dream of a boy with a crooked smile and blue eyes that are always laughing at Arthur, even when his face is still.

 

He’s forgotten it by the next morning, though. The first thing he thinks of when he wakes is his speech, as soon as he does, he’s completely alert.

The title of Arthur’s Nobel lecture is “The Myth of the Myth of Progress”. He’s like to say he put months of work into it, but the truth is that he’s at that chronically over-extended stage in his career where he always has more projects than time, so instead it’s cobbled together from bits and pieces of things he’s been working on for a while. Even so, put together, they showcase the big picture implications of his work, which Arthur feels is appropriate for an occasion such as this. 

“When I began my career,” he states, and then stops, looking over the crowd. Photographers’ lights flash. Arthur is aware of how he must appear: immaculately groomed, still handsome despite his middle age: he’s kept trim, and, thankfully, kept most of his hair. He thinks again about how he’s got a good chance at the Fed chairmanship when he goes back, or his pick of political advisory positions. Arthur has always known he’d be good at jobs like those: just as he commands a classroom, he can command any room. People look at him and see a leader.

“When I began my career, I believed that the field could accomplish many things for the world: but as a graduate student, like most young economists, I quickly learned to suppress such grandiose sentiments and keep my nose to the grindstone, producing papers instead of naïve philosophy.”

This gets a few chuckles: having captured his audience with this self-effacing introduction, he can move into the meat of his presentation: how economics, as a field, must, in fact, think about these questions: how it is the rightful burden of a field that sits intersection of the humanities and science. 

“For most of human history, the best most people could imagine for themselves was a short life, similar to those of their parents, hopefully free of too much pain or tragedy. The best a leader could hope to achieve for his people was to carve out a small space for them: a safe haven that might endure for his lifetime, or, with luck, for the lifetimes of a few of his descendants.

But today, we cannot even imagine what life will be like for our children, much less our grandchildren. We have nearly unimaginable technology, global communication: in short, we have it in our capacity to do something that for most of the history of mankind, we could not even imagine: literally, to remake the world. That is a frightening reality. We try to protect ourselves from it with dry, academic language, but we feel it to be true. 

He knows it’s a good speech: it sets his audience thrumming with energy, excitement and optimism. By the time he makes his closing remarks, every single pair of eyes is fixed on him, a thousand taut strings he holds gathered in his hand, like the reins of horses. Suddenly he has a strange memory of another time like this: other occasions upon which he’s held other crowds (ones he doesn’t recognize, in strange clothing, mixed together). He shakes his head, trying to clear it of the stray thought, and then sees Emrys sitting on the end of one of the middle rows. Was he there all along? 

Remembering his self-pitying drunkenness the other night, Arthur feels embarrassed, and wishes he didn’t have to see the other man again. Deep down, he also knows why he had felt so over-sharing: he’s always had that tendency, that proclivity, with men he finds attractive. 

But now Emrys looks familiar. It’s something about those quick eyes, that seem to see through Arthur. Did he look that way the night before? A wave of queasiness rises in Arthur’s stomach, but he forces it down again, and schools himself to think rationally. It was good of Emrys to come. He ought to say so, but by the time he is finished answering questions and shaking hands after the talk is over, the Prize Winner in Medicine has disappeared.

 

Later, when he returns to the hotel and pops into the restaurant for a quick supper, he finds Emrys at the bar alone and feels uneasy again. But then a sense of recklessness overtakes him instead. He wonders whether his triumph of the morning has redeemed what must be Emrys’ poor opinion of him from the night be before. Surely the doctor now sees him in a different light: not as a sad divorced middle-aged man but rather, an impressive and enviable figure. So he goes over and asks if Emrys is waiting for anyone. 

“No,” he replies. “I’ve just finished meeting with some colleagues and now I’m on my own. Join me?”

Arthur slides into place beside him, appreciative of the smooth invitation. Emrys’ eyes are sharp blue, his gaze is cutting but kind. He has crow’s feet at the corners, evidence of years of squinting and laughing. Again, Arthur has a sense of déjà vu, and he finds himself staring at Emrys far too long, until the doctor, politely, breaks the silence.

“Very nice lecture, by the way.”

“Thanks,” said Arthur. “I suppose you’re putting the finishing touches on yours.”

“Well,” Emrys says. “It’s funny you should mention that.”

Outside the thick glass plate of the restaurant windows, snow is on the ground, lit up by streetlamps in the early darkness, giving downtown Stockholm a somewhat fairytale-ish glow. A few people hurry like refugees from the cold, darting between the buildings and transportation. 

“My mentor,” Emyrs says, “wrote a speech. I brought it with me to read. He didn’t write it for the Nobel Prize. It was meant for some other prize he didn’t win, so he never used it.”

“Oh,” Arthur says, surprised.

“Yes,” Emrys agrees, and then he leans fractionally towards Arthur, “But the thing is – I don’t know. I’m not sure if I should.”

“Why not?”

“Hm.” Emrys frowns, and rummages in a jacket pocket. “See for yourself.”

The speech is a crisp printed page tucked into a neat white envelope. Arthur pulls it out and skims. It’s a perfectly acceptable speech, effusive if anything. There are a few places where someone, presumably Emyrs, has edited, striking out the word “Fuller Prize” and replacing it with “Nobel”, in a scrawl. 

“I don’t see the problem,” he says, handing it back to Emrys, who quirks one side of his mouth in a funny smile that makes his long face suddenly boyish.

“It’s awfully grateful, isn’t it?”

“You’re supposed to be grateful, aren’t you, when you’re awarded with one of the top prizes in the world?”

“Yes,” Emrys agrees, but he sounds like he’s saying no. “But Gaius worked his whole life, you know. He didn’t do it for recognition but he always wanted it, a little bit, as all of us do. I just think he did more for us than they did for him, in the end. I don’t want to read a letter where he grovels like a grateful old man, pleased to finally have a seat at the table with kings and queens: I want them to recognize that they’re lucky to be sitting with him.”

He speaks calmly, but his eyes are sparking: he’s speaking with the kind of blind passion usually reserved for younger men. Arthur hesitates, though, and Emrys seems to catch it.

“You think I’m over-reacting,” he says.

“I think you miss him,” Arthur says, and is surprised to realize that really is what he thinks. And then suddenly he thinks that he misses the old man a bit too: although he’s never known him, never even seen a photo of him, he gets a sense of the shape of him in his mind: round shouldered, patient, usually, but with quick tongue where it’s needed.

Emrys blinks at Arthur, as if he’s surprised, and then blinks again, and Arthur suddenly realizes that maybe he’s really upset. Disconcerted, he lifts a hand to rest of Emrys’ shoulder, intending to administer a manful pat. But his hand ends up just sitting there, like a weight attached to his arm, harder than it should be to move.

“I do miss him.” Emrys says, and, with a final blink, he seems to collect himself. He looks at Arthur’s hand, still on his shoulder. Awkwardly, Arthur removes it, and suddenly both of them are chuckling at the strangeness of the situation, until Emrys glances at him again and says, hesitantly, “Arthur, do you remember…?”

“Remember what?” Arthur says, waiting for Emrys’ question to end. But Emrys just shakes his head. 

“Maybe we should start calling each other by our first names.” He looks at Arthur and smiles, lifting one side of his mouth higher than the other, a quirked, funny expression that makes Arthur catch his breath. “Call me Merlin.”

 

At the Nobel forum the next day, Merlin is a heron-like, slightly stooping profile in front of the lectern. He wears a gray suit that might be the same as the one he wore the day before, ill-fitting and inexpensive. When his eyes fix momentarily on Arthur he smiles, hesitantly, and Arthur smiles reassuringly back.

“I’ve decided to read a letter,” Merlin says. He stands a little too far from the microphone so his first words are nearly lost. Then Merlin shuffles closer.

“This was written to me by my mentor, Dr. Gaius Walker, not long after we began working together.” Merlin says. He clears his throat. “We should be grateful that he was not of the email generation, or I wouldn’t have this to remember him by.” The crowd laughs politely. 

As he begins to read Gaius’ letter, his naturally deep voice slips into an even slightly deeper, more rhythmic cadence, as if he is remembering the way the old man used to speak.

“My dear boy,” he says. “I am very glad to hear that the results of your latest experiment are promising. I do think the pathway through which the chloycobacter invades the epithelial lining will prove to be’ - oh well,” Merlin says, “this part may not be interesting to you. Let me skip ahead a little.

‘There are many things in this world we do not know, and one of these things is whether the work to which we devote our lives will have any lasting value. It is true that I think about this more, when I am here’ - Gaius was working in the newly founded Dhaka hospital at the time,” Merlin makes an aside to tell the audience, “’then when I am in my office, surrounded by my books and my shining laboratory equipment and my entirely too congratulatory colleagues. Recently I have come to the conclusion that we can never be sure – that history is too complex to ever unravel the effect of a single person, and that perhaps to even attempt to do so is to be asking the wrong questions entirely.

Merlin, we no longer live in a world where one single shining visionary, or even a small cadre of extremely well-trained academics, can rush in and save the day at any given moment. Nowadays, it can only be saved by a nearly infinite number of small acts, performed meticulously by a billion careful hands.

And while I was about to say that each pairs of hands belongs to an individual, who must be born, raised in a good environment, educated, and finally given a valuable opportunity to work, if they are to succeed in their appointed task, I’m not sure if this is even true. If you look around you, you will see many people classified as having very little, who manage a great deal, and also many others who have been given every opportunity, but only use it to grow fat, like caterpillars that eat away at the stalk supporting them.

So the truth is, my dear boy, that the older I grow the more uncertain I become. I am convinced that we must live simply, treat other people well, and to do the best work we can. But beyond that, everything to me is a mystery.”

Merlin finishes and folds the letter, and returns it to his jacket pocket. His audience claps politely, but Arthur detects uncertainty in them - some are fainting wondering if they have been criticized, others think the thing is a little trite. 

Merlin straightens, shakes a few hands, and then descends from the podium.

 

 

“So you did it,” Arthur says, when he runs into Merlin in the lobby after. “You didn’t read his old speech.”

“No,” Merlin agrees. “I brought a lot of his old letters with me, and just before the speech I happened to reread that one, and-” he shrugs, and Arthur notices how bony his shoulders are, under his jacket.

“What are you plans for the rest of the day?” he asks, impulsively.

To his surprise, Merlin makes a face in response, more suited to a small boy being forced to eat something disagreeable than a world-renounced medical researcher. 

“Press conferences,” he moans. “It’s my one free afternoon in Stockholm, and I wanted to spend it sightseeing. But they’ve got me shaking hands at some meeting or other.”

Arthur can’t help it; he throws his head back and laughs. “Surely you agreed to this, Merlin.”

“Alright, I did. And I should be responsible and attend.”

“Don’t.”

“What?”

Arthur mirrors Merlin’s earlier shrug. Then he leans into him, close enough that it’s like they’re sharing a secret. “Let’s sight-see.” 

“Surely you have things to do as well,” Merlin laughs, as if it’s some sort of a joke, but he’s still watching Arthur carefully. That decides Arthur, although he’d been only a hairs’ breath from pulling back and saying that of course he wasn’t serious. He doesn’t know what’s come over him, but all at once he’s filled with a kind of childish glee at the thought of playing hooky, the same sense that used to come over him when he and Morgana, aged 16, would steal the keys to the roof of Uther’s building and go up there to smoke. 

Merlin is watching him with a strange, pensive expression, probably wondering if Arthur is having a breakdown right before his eyes. 

“I don’t have any plans at all,” Arthur lies. “And I’d love to see more of a city, for once, than just the hotel I’m staying in.” Which is true.

“All right,” says Merlin, after a moment. “Shall we go, then? I was thinking of the Djurgården. It may be cold,” he adds, warningly. “But I see that you have a very good coat.” 

“I do,” says Arthur, smiling. “And so do you.”

 

The Djurgården in the center of Stockholm was on a frozen island set amidst a frozen lake, where the snow and the ice had been ground by the winter into a fine dust. When the wind came up, it was set into motion: eddies and currents of snow dancing over the frozen water just as eddies and currents under the ice so also move. Arthur and Merlin watch it sideways, with their eyes squinting to protect against the cold, and their nose and mouth covered but still with every breath frozen air rushing into their lungs, painful for a moment before melting. 

To Arthur, it is beautiful but also utterly inhospitable, and he appreciates it with the same kind of aesthetic detachment he’d use to size up a worthy opponent. The structures dotted about the park are like lighthouses, solid beacons of humanity in an otherwise blindingly white landscape. 

Every time he looks at Merlin, he gets a flash of something new – some new memory that is not a memory, because it simply can’t be. When Merlin almost turns his foot on a rock, he has an idea that the same thing happened once before, on a sunny day, in a forest somewhere very different from where they are now. When Merlin looks out over the snow fields, Arthur imagines his eyes burning gold, and shivers. 

They tramp along the snow-covered paths, talking little, walking briskly to keep warm; nodding cheerfully to the few other visitors they pass. Finally they come to a long, frozen beach. The ice has crept up onto the sand like hands and fingers trying to reach them. Again, Arthur feels some memory is tugging at the edge of his consciousness. He has the sudden, terrifying thought that there’s a girl out there, trapped under the ice, pounding and desperate to get out.

Merlin looks out at it a long time, while Arthur waits, shifting from one foot to the other, trying to think how to ask – he doesn’t know what, exactly.

“I wish he was here,” Merlin says, finally. “I thought this would be easier somehow. Because he was old, because it was relatively quick - it was his time.”

“Don’t be silly,” Arthur says. “It doesn’t get easier, only harder.”

Merlin looks at him, and for a second, there’s clear grief in his eyes: like a well, you could drop a coin in and it would never hit the bottom. Arthur sees himself reflected there, too – a version of himself, locked sleeping deep under water. He imagines his eyes opening, himself thrashing around and then, about to drown, pushing himself upwards and kicking, kicking, struggling to reach the surface before his lungs give out. 

Merlin’s eyes widen. Arthur takes a deep, shuddering breath, painful when the cold winter air rushes into his throat, and drops to his knees, sinking into the snow, panting, trying desperately to hold onto consciousness as not one, but a thousand images come rushing over him. They are too many, moving too fast, for him to stop and understand any single one of them. 

He feels Merlin’s hand come to rest on his shoulder, and all at once he remembers another day, when Merlin was kneeling in front of him, rather than the other way around.

He’s still trying to find his voice, to ask if Merlin remembers it too, when Merlin speaks. 

“Come on,” he says, kindly. “Let’s get you inside.” He helps Arthur to his feet, half-smiling in his way.

His feet don’t feel like his feet. His legs don’t feel like his legs. They ought to be young, and strong: the legs of a boy who could ride for days, fight any man in Camelot to a draw, or run circuits around the castle with the knights at dawn. Instead they are the legs of an older man, an academic, who spends too many hours a week at his desk, and has forgotten what his body is for. 

“I remember Gaius.” Arthur croaks. He’s not sure why it’s the first thing to come into his head. 

Merlin blinks, and the tears freeze in his eyelashes. 

 

The awards ceremony the next day is a complicated, highly choreographed event filled with dignitaries, heads of state, and all their respective security details.

It passes like a blur for Arthur. Time has slowed down and all he is thinking about is Merlin, and Camelot, and all the things- a lifetime of things he had forgotten. Some of them are painful to have to remember again. But some of them are glorious, and the best memories are those of the two of them, in the early days before Uther’s death, when so much still seemed possible, when they would ride out into the forests around Camelot to hunt, and camp, and built campfires and roast fish in the evenings. When he shakes the Prime Minister’s hand he remembers Uther, when he is introduced to a princess, he thinks of Morgause. It is probably significant that in this life, as well as that one, he is so well used to ceremony and ritual that he does everything perfectly without giving it a single thought, functioning on autopilot until someone is pressing a heavy gold disc into his hands and saying “congratulations” for the thousandth time. Then the cameras are flashing and Arthur smiles professionally, automatically, but feeling the weight of it in his hand.

 

Then comes the banquet after the awards ceremony. Arthur is relieved when Merlin comes to sit beside him: he is still so disoriented that Merlin is his anchor, without which he would be sure he was going mad. 

There are speeches. The waiters bring out perfect china with course after course of complicated appetizers and entrees: little bits of food organized on the plates like pieces of art. Arthur is too distracted to even notice the taste. Merlin picks at his food as though he is confused by it. 

“So here we are,” Merlin says, looking across the lavish dining room instead of applying himself to a carefully cut slice of beef wellington. “What do you suppose it means that we ended up here this time? Is the world finally going somewhere, or are we just spinning in place, making the same mistakes over and over?”

Arthur quirks his lip. “Isn’t that a better question for the physicist? Or the novelist?”

Merlin laughs softly. “I guess so.”

“That is why I got into economics, you know.” Arthur says thoughtfully. “On some level I always want prosperity and order. Uther was a businessman, so when I went to University I thought, understand the system, define good policies, lift people out of poverty and so forth. Then I learned how complicated it all was. God, the modern world has managed to make everything impossibly complicated, hasn’t it?”

“Possibly.” Merlin twiddles his fork. “It did seem simpler back then, didn’t it? But maybe we were just younger, so we thought it was simpler.” He frowns and nods out towards the room. “Do you think that our work is improving the world, as they say it is?”

“How do I know?”

“But does that mean this is going to keep on happening forever, then?” Merlin’s voice is low, but the question is urgent. Arthur looks at him and shakes his head. He’s not sorry that when he dies everything will reset for him, like a tape stripped and recorded over. 

 

It’s well past midnight when the banquet ends. Drivers are waiting to take them back to their hotel. The air is bitingly cold when they leave the Stockholm city hall, and perhaps it feels colder because the night is pitch black, and the snow heaped around the sides of the walkway, in white mounds hardened over to ice.

“Share a car back to the hotel?” Merlin asks, and Arthur says “why not?” and follows him into the back seat.

When they get back to the hotel, they don’t really talk about it, but they walk together back towards the elevator, and Merlin pushes the button for his floor, and doesn’t push the button for Arthur’s.

 

Afterwards, their middle-aged bodies colliding against each other, Merlin’s mouth, as hot and sweet as anything Arthur could imagine, his knee, wickedly, pushing itself in between Arthur’s legs, and a spike of hot arousal so strong that he was hard faster than he’d been since he was a teenager, Arthur looks into Merlin’s eyes, smirking back at him as if to say, we aren’t too old for this yet.

It has never been like this with Gwen, and she has always known and Arthur has known and refused ever to say so out loud. He doesn’t make the same mistakes every lifetime, but he doesn’t always not make them, either. 

I’ve wasted so much time, he thinks, and all at once has to bite his lip, blink back tears, because he hadn’t remembered – he hadn’t remembered how to – and now he is old and his life is wasted. 

“Hey,” Merlin says, cupping his face. “Hey, it’s all right. It’s all right, isn’t it?” 

Arthur is afraid he’ll start crying. He doesn’t know the answer.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic really kicked my butt. Concrit appreciated. More extensive writing rant posted here: http://harrycrewe.livejournal.com/3502.html


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